Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1887-06-03

Good by, John, dear john" said Bessie,
kissing him again and again, and striving to
keep back the tears that do what she could,
would gather in her blue eyes. "Good by,
my love"
"God bless you dearest" he said, simply,
kissing her in answer; good by, Mr.. Croft,
l hope to see you again i'll n week." and he
was in the cart and had gathered up the long
and intricate looking reins, Jantje let go
the horses heads and gave whoop. Mouti,
giving up star gazing, suddenly became an
animated being and scrambled into the cart
with surprising aacrity, the horses sprang
forward at a hand galop and were soon hid
den from Besscs dim sight in n cloud of dust.
Poor Bessic 1t was u hard trial; and now
that John had gone and her tears could not
distress him, she went into her room and
gave way to them freely enough.
John reached Lucb's, an establishment on
the Pretoria road that happily combined the
characteristics of an inn, a shop and a farm
house, such us are to be met with in spa1sely
populated countries 1t was not an inn and
not a farm house, strictly speaking, nor was
it altogether "A shop, though there was
"storen attached. II the traveller were anx-
ious to obtain accommodation for man and
beast at place of this stamphe had to pro
coed warily, 50 to speak. lest he should be re-
uuested to move on. lie must advance, hat
in hand, and ask to be taken in as favor, as
many a high handed traveller accustomed to
the obsequious attentions of "mine host"
has learned to his cost. There is 10
such dreadful autocrat as your half and half
inn keeper in South Africa and then he is so
completely master Of the situation. "lf you
don't like it, go and be id to you," is his
simple answer to the remonstrances of the
Infatuated voyager. And then you must
either knock under and look as though you
liked it, or trek on into the "unhosteled"
wilderness. On this occasion, however, John
Jared well enough. To begin with he knew
the owners of this place, who were very civil
people if approached in o humble spirit, and,
furthermore, he found everybody in such
state of unpleasurabe excitement that they
were only 100 glad to get another nglishman
to talk the matters over with Not that
their information amounted to much, how
ever. There was rumor of the Bronker's
| Spruit disaster and other rumors of the in
| vestment of Pretoria, and of the advance of
large bodies of Beers to take possession of the
pass over the Drakensburg, known as Laing's
Mex but there was no definite intelligence.
you won't get into Pretoria" said one
melancholy man, $50 it's no use trying. The
Beers will just catch you and kill you, and
there will be an end of it. You had better
leave the girl to look after herself and go
| back to Mooifontein."
| But this was not Johns view of the matter.
"Wel," he said, lat any rate, I'll have try"
Indeed, he had sort of bulldog sentiment
about him that led him to believe that, if he
made up his mind to do II thing, he would do
ii somehow, unless he should be physically in
! capacitatcd by circumstances beyond his own
| control 1t is wonderful how far mood of
| this sort will take II man. Indeed, it is the
! widespread possession of this sentiment that
| has made England what she is. Now it is be-
! ginning to die down and be legislated out of
our national character, and the results are
already commencing to appear in the incip-
| lent decay of our power. We cannot gov
ern Ireland 1t is beyond us; let Ireland
! have home rule! We cannot cope with our
| imperial responsibilities; let them be cast off !;
and so on. The Englshmen of fifty years ago
did not talk like this. Well, every nation be-
comes emasculated sooner or later, that seems
to be the universal fate; and it appears that
it is our lot to be emaSculated, not by the
want of law, but by plethora of it. This
country was made, not by governments, but
| mostly III despite of them by the Independent
efforts of series of individuals The ten
| dency nowadays Is 10 merge tne Individual Ill
the government, and to limit and even
forcbly destroy personal enterprise and re-
sponsiblity. Everything is to be legislated
for or legisated against. The system is only
in its bud as yet. When it blooms the EN-
pre will lose touch of its individual atoms and
become a vast, soulless machine, which will
first get out of order, then break down, and,
last of all, break up, We owe more to sturdy,
determined, unconvincible Englishmen like
John Mel than we realize, or, perhaps, should
be willing to acknowledge in these enlight-
ened days.
(TO be cOntinued.)